It is well known to formulate hard-surface cleaning compositions, containing organic solvents and chelating agents.
European Patent Application 0 040 882, 0 080 749, 0 126 545 describe the use of solvents represented by mixtures of terpenes with benzyl alcohol or butyl carbitol, together with builders which are mainly polyphosphates, or nitrogen containing strong sequestrants like NTA.
EP 0 105 863 and U.S. Pat. No. 3,591,510 describe the use of certain glycol ether derivatives as solvents in liquid cleansers, together with polyphosphate builders.
The above solvent/builder combinations have proven very effective; however, in recent years phosphates have come under scrutiny for environmental reasons.
Iminodiacetic acid derivatives are known to possess metal sequestering properties, and several compounds of the type have been synthesised and investigated for this purpose.
The compounds N-2-hydroxyethyl-N, N-diacetic acid and N-diethyleneglycol-N, N-diacetic acid and N(1-hydroxypropyl) imino N, N-diacetic acid have been disclosed in Japanese Laid-Open Application 59/70652;
Other iminodiacetic derivatives such as N(-2-hydroxypropyl)imino N, N-diacetic acid, and di-hydroxypropyl imino (N,N,diacetic acid) are disclosed in DE-OS 23 14 449, and DE-OS 25 42 708;
There has been no disclosure, however, of the chelating agents described herein, in combination with organic solvents according to the present invention.
It has now been surprisingly discovered that the combination of the chelating agents herein with certain organic solvent provide very good results in terms of soil removal from hard surfaces.
It is therefore the object of the present invention to provide efficient hard surface cleaning compositions containing the combination of a chelating agent derived from iminodiacetic acid, and a suitable organic solvent.